The Menu of Life
Friday, April 27, 2007 at 14:54 There’s a big myth about the modern age which is that we all have to work much harder than we ever did before. We hear about the frantic pace of the modern workplace, etc. etc. Frankly it’s a load of hooey — as any description of the working conditions of ordinary people more than seventy or so years ago will tell you. I still have the letters my grandmother wrote home to my great-grandmother in England, when she was out in Canada during the First World War. My grandparents were farming out on the Alberta plains on land recently opened up by the Canadian Pacific Railway. With four small children in a wood cabin in the middle of the prairie, she just worked solidly from the time she got up in the morning (about 4 or 5) till the time she went to bed at night (about 11 or 12) seven days a week with no holidays. And my grandfather did the same, out on the prairie in all weathers.
So where did this myth come from that we are all overworked these days as a result of the pace of modern life? Well, it’s certainly true that many of us spend our time rushing around constantly busy. But rush and busyness don’t necessarily equal productive work (or play).
One of the very real differences between life today and life in olden times is that we have far more choice. My grandparents had very little choice about how they spent their days. Everything they did was necessary if they were going to survive — there were no distractions like computer games or tv or the internet. They couldn’t just even get in a car and go off to the cinema. No car, no cinema. Life for them, and for most working people, was like the fixed menu in a restaurant. If you were lucky you might get one or two choices but for the most part you ate what you were given and got on with it.
These days life for most of us is like being presented with an enormous restaurant menu with hundreds of choices. Most of them sound mouthwatering and making up our minds is really difficult.
In a real restaurant when we are presented with a huge menu like this we know that, however much we dither, we have got to make up our minds what we are going to have. Usually we will choose a starter, a main course and a dessert.
However when we are presented with the menu of life, instead of selecting a starter, a main course and dessert from all the hundreds of choices, we behave as if we had to eat the whole menu!
So it’s not surprising that we end up rushed off our feet. We commit ourselves to so many things that there is no possibility that we can do all of them. Unlike my grandparents, who had to work incredibly long and hard hours, our rushing around is a self-inflicted injury.
The next time you find yourself complaining how busy you are, think about the restaurant menu and ask yourself how many courses you are trying to cram into your current meal. Are you trying to have five starters, ten main courses and six desserts? No wonder you are having difficulty cramming it all in!
So make a start on cutting your commitments back to a make a meal that you stand some chance of being able to digest. And remember — when you have finished one meal, you can always come back and have another!
Reader Comments (10)
There are plenty of people from China and India who read this website. I can't answer for them, but I'm not sure they would agree that nothing has changed since their grandparents' time. Comments welcome!
How small this world is! My father's family was part of a covered wagon caravan that went from South Dakota to Alberta Canada in 1911 or 1912. They felled their own trees to build their own cabin, and everybody in the settlement contributed man hours to build the church and the school and clear paths as dirt roads. My dad's mom always told my dad and his siblings that education was the best way out of poverty. From that cabin with no utilites or furniture he studied hard and became a surgeon. His sister became a university professor and his other sister became a secondary school teacher. They had to do the farming because their father was dead, and had to put in their hours in community time and had to study around that schedule under the light of whale blubber lamps..........but their hard work got them out of poverty and into careers of service.(community obligation was almost as important as family or church obligations.
Hmmmmmm.....I wonder if your family was in the same settlement as my Dad's family...
Fundamentally, the trick must be to decide which dishes you really, really, *want* to eat. When it comes to life choices, what is the best way of doing that?
Jennelle
De Masi describes the relation between us and our work/job, and how this evolved since the stone age throughout the industrial revolution until now, where many are "knowledge workers". It gives a new perspective to such things. Plus, he says we should all be working less! :)
Seligman discovered that during "the Great Depression" in the '30 people were actually less depressed than now. They haven't choices, like us. They just have to confront with reality every day. They were sad, but not depressed. Too much choice, I know it sounds odd, it's a source of depression.
Applied to life, the lesson would probably be "pick your restaurant carefully"! Don't just go for the place with the 17 page menu in the hope that the "choice" will be better - chances are that the chefs there can barely remember how to cook each dish! Whereas if you go to somewhere with only a few choices, the chefs have had more chance to perfect those few dishes (even if we're not talking about Michelin starred places!).
Obviously, it's not quite as simple as this in reality, because in life we have to "construct our own restaurant", either by accident or design. Some people are lucky enough to stumble on a fabulous "restaurant" with little effort, but for most of us, if we want the best "restaurant" we have to design it. I suppose this boils down to really thinking about what our "perfect life menu" would be, and focusing on that, trying not to let other things creep in. That doesn't mean we can never "change the menu" - good restaurants don't stick to the same menu forever, but they don't just chop and change for the sake of it. When they make changes they will be carefully thought through, perfected until they are ready to be unveiled to their customers. Menus will change to reflect the seasons, new ideas the chef has had, and so on, but a popular dish won't suddenly be scrapped unless the chef feels stuck in a rut, and changes won't be rushed without careful planning.
Anyway, thanks for giving me this "food for thought" - I'm going to go and have a go at writing my "life menu"!